I'm a year shy of being 40 years old, and just recently learned (through my wife's official researching on writing/blogging) that it's no longer considered proper to put a double-space after a period. So I'm trying it in this post. Oops I just double spaced right before "Oops" by habit.

I've been typing this way since learning decades ago, but I guess the practice goes back to manual typesetting in the 1920's or so. Slightly larger spaces were placed after each sentence for readability, and the double-space rule was adopted with typing machines to keep that trend. But now it has been abandoned in official writing circles. Don't these sentences look too close together?

(When I wrote my thesis and finished my Master's Degree last year, none of my professors said a peep about spaces between sentences. So maybe it's not all that universal yet. Anyone else over 40 having a problem with this? )

4 years in grammar school in the UK, and we were not taught to double space. However, I learned when we came to the US that schools here teach different grammar, spelling and punctuation Actually, I worked for a US company in the UK for 10 years, and we used to kid each other in our daily correspondence about differences in spelling and grammar.

I'm the newsletter editor for several clubs, and always edit out double spaces

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none of my professors said a peep about spaces between sentences.

Colleges I attended had "form style manuals" or some such, which defined how they wanted things written, although I don't recall what they said about spaces. Did your post graduate college have such a document?

What I should have said is I was taught to double space after a paragraph but not after every sentence that ends in a period as seems to be what was implied in the original post. In the military we often double spaced between each line on drafts so it could be marked up before the final. In grade school we were taught to indent the beginning of each paragraph when writing by hand. Gee, I can still remember.

I learned to type in the 5th grade. I've heard this, but cannot break myself from double spacing. It is so ingrained in me. I do it without thinking. Much like the to "dashes" on the F and the J key. I learned to use those keys to find the home row while in tech school in the Air Force and now it is part of me. I cannot type anymore without those raised dashes on the keys. It throws off my thinking to the point that I cannot use that keyboard. I for one, will continue to double space. Please feel free to edit them out Tom. I'll keep putting them in though.

« Last Edit: February 20, 2017, 07:34:49 PM by edjunior »

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Ed.....KF5INW2011 F-250 XLT, 6.7L PSD2010 Forest River Wildcat 28RKBS"I thought I was wrong once, but I was wrong!"

I've heard/read of the trend to single space after periods, but it seems easier understand context and paragraph structure with less conscious thought when double spaces are used. I guess I'm getting too old to change that particular preference.

I double space some and single space some. No one has mentioned it before this. BTW, I never did learn to type----------I look at the keys sometimes-------------and sometimes I don't use periods.Marvin

LOL.... I surrender..I don't look for single or double spacing. (I always single space)..Rather a coherent and salient thought within a paragraph is always nice.Not a problem on this forum... You should see some others.

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I never did learn to type, one finger hunt and peck while looking at the keyboard. I never thought about double spacing. As Bob says this forum is generally pretty good with punctuation and grammar, others I go on often leave a lot to be desired.

I've never heard of it or contemplated it and honestly 40 isn't that old but it does explain the spacing in really old textbooks from the 40s and 50s. I just thought processors back then were a little hard to keep uniform.

Maybe something to do with where you grew up also. You can set MS word to do that sort of spacing automatically so I'd be willing to bet your professors just thought you liked that classic, scholarly look

Colleges I attended had "form manuals" or some such, which defined how they wanted things written, although I don't recall what they said about spaces. Did your post graduate college have such a document?

Indeed, but different courses/professors had different preferences for which format should be used. At different points of my post-grad "career" I used up to 4 different formatting methods... ASA, APA, MLS, and CMS. I have no idea what any of them say about spacing!

With all the bad grammar, bad spelling and bad punctuation I see on the Internet I think the number of spaces after a period is very low on my list of complaints.

Yeah I realize the standards are low (which is fine!) on the internet. Just a weird (to me) update that I recently learned about for more "official" correspondence, and I'm having a hard time breaking myself of the period-space-space habit.

Ooh good question and I think I still do it on a keyboard - will check later - was taught this as a typist. However I don't do it on my tablet or phone. Probably because they automatically put spaces in, even though it's only 1.

I'm a double space kind of guy and don't see any changes for me in the near or distant future. That is how I was taught in 1970-1971 in typing class. I took three semesters of typing and my reason for taking three instead of one (one was required), is that most of the class in the second and third semester was............Female! It was just me and my buddy Stan, surrounded by 33 high school girls.

Another thing that I see frequently is the lack of a comma when needed. Example: Yesterday we went to town and shopped, had dinner, and saw a movie. Lots of folks would leave out the comma after the word "dinner". I was taught that when you structure a sentence using multiple nouns, like the above example, a comma is required after each and every one.

I was taught to double space following the end of a sentence. At one time I had a word processor that either auto-double spaced or reacted to a double space differently than a single space. forget which been around 30+ years.

Sometimes I even double space.

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Nothing adds excitement like something that is none of your businessMy Home is where I park it.

Apparently my childhood was deprived, since nobody taught me about spacing between sentences except that there was some. Maybe because I never had a typing class? We wrote in cursive or printed, so the notion of "single" or "double" did not apply.

I mostly double-space when using a keyboard, simply because it improves readability in longer paragraphs. Never really thought about having a rule about it, though.